1st Edition

Archaeology After Interpretation Returning Materials to Archaeological Theory

    418 Pages
    by Routledge

    418 Pages
    by Routledge

    A new generation of archaeologists has thrown down a challenge to post-processual theory, arguing that characterizing material symbols as arbitrary overlooks the material character and significance of artifacts. This volume showcases the significant departure from previous symbolic approaches that is underway in the discipline. It brings together key scholars advancing a variety of cutting edge approaches, each emphasizing an understanding of artifacts and materials not in terms of symbols but relationally, as a set of associations that compose people’s understanding of the world. Authors draw on a diversity of intellectual sources and case studies, paving a dynamic road ahead for archaeology as a discipline and theoretical approaches to material culture.

    Chapter 1 Archaeology after Interpretation, Andrew Meirion Jones, Alberti Benjamin; Part I Relational Ontologies, Benjamin Alberti; Chapter 2 Archaeology and Ontologies of Scale: The Case of Miniaturization in First-Millennium Northwest Argentina, Benjamin Alberti; Chapter 3 Transmorphic Being, Corresponding Affect: Ontology and Rock Art in South-Central California, David W. Robinson; Chapter 4 Carnival Times and the Semiopraxis of the Snake: Mining and the Politics of Knowledge, Alejandro Haber; Chapter 5 Unstable Contexts: Relational Ontologies and Domestic Settings in Andean Northwest Argentina, Andrés Gustavo Laguens; Part II Working with Materials, Andrew Meirion Jones; Chapter 6 Deception and (Mis)representation: Skeuomorphs, Materials, and Form, Chantal Connetter; Chapter 7 Designing with Living: A Contextual Archaeology of Dependent Architecture, Lesley McFadyen; Chapter 8 Archaeological Complexity: Materials, Multiplicity, and the Transitions to Agriculture in Britain, Andrew Meirion Jones, Emilie Sibbesson; Part III Assembling the Social, Joshua Pollard; Chapter 9 From Ahu to Avebury: Monumentality, the Social, and Relational Ontologies, Joshua Pollard; Chapter 10 Fields of Movement in the Ancient Woodlands of North America, Sarah E. Baires, Amanda J. Butler, B. Jacob Skousen, Timothy R. Pauketat; Chapter 11 Objects and Social Change: A Case Study from Saxo-Norman Southampton, Ben Jervis; Chapter 12 Dynamic Assemblages, or the Past Is What Endures: Change and the Duration of Relations, Chris Fowler; Chapter 13 Assembling Bodies, Making Worlds: An Archaeological Topology of Place, Marcus W.R. Brittain; Part IV Beyond Representation, Andrew Meirion Jones; Chapter 14 Archaeological Visualization and the Manifestation of the Discipline: Model-Making at the Institute of Archaeology, London, Sara Perry; Chapter 15 Articulating Relations: A Non-Representational View of Scandinavian Rock Art, Fredrik Fahlander; Chapter 16 Materials of Affect: Miniatures in the Scandinavian Late Iron Age (AD 550-1050), Ing-Marie Back Danielsson; Chapter 17 Representational Approaches to Irish Passage Tombs: Legacies, Burdens, Opportunities, Andrew Cochrane; Chapter 18 Afterword: Archaeology and the Science of New Objects, Gavin Lucas;

    Biography

    Benjamin Alberti, Andrew Meirion Jones, Joshua Pollard